Comment by loiseaujc

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Comment by loiseaujc

OP here.

> This is a big red flag. If they have little background in programming, teach good standards of Python.

That is a big issue, I'll admit it. And actually, in my Uni, I am a very strong proponent of making an intro to programming class mandatory before even being able to enroll in any other engineering classes. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening anytime soon mostly because the higher-ups have a distorted view of what programming actually is. And I believe it is the same in many French universities. May-be different elsewhere, I don't know, but in the mean time I have to make do with what I have.

> Otherwise they will get worst patterns, and think that GOTO is the preferred way of coding.

People keep on referring to `goto`. But that is a construct that has been considered bad since the Fortran 1990 standard, 35 years ago. Fair enough, there are plenty of legacy codes using it. Just like there are plenty of C code written 35 years which are just terrible by today standard. Modern Fortran (and by modern I mean anything following 2003 standard and more recent) does not use `goto`. And academics writing Fortran code today do not use `goto`, nor do they teach it.

> If you think why a lot of academic code looks like mess, one of the reason is using archaic tools and techniques as a standard.

Again, I think this is a very distorted view. When you need to run your code on 1000+ CPU, which is what I and my colleagues do, you better make sure your code makes use of all the most recent good practices and use industry-standard tooling not to waste CPU hours because of a stupid bug or what not.

Replies loiseaujc · 2025-09-24
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